McCarthy presses Obama on background checks

12/16/12 4:22 PM EST

In a letter released Sunday, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) — who vowed recently to "embarrass" President Obama on gun control — asked the White House to move forward on several recommendations regarding gun control.

“Watching your remarks on Friday in response to the shooting in Connecticut , I cried with you, and I listened as you said that to events like these you react not as a president, but as a parent. I understand, better than most, that reaction, but I also need you to respond now as a president. I, and this country, need you to lead us on this issue," McCarthy wrote to Obama about the shooting in Newtown, Conn., that killed 26 people.

The New York Times reported Saturday that the Department of Justice drew up a list of ideas to improve background checks in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting that wounded former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

The Times reported that most of those recommendations to improve the National Instant Background Check System (NICS) were never implemented by the White House, despite a call from Obama in 2011 to improve those very safety measures.

“I ask you to immediately improve the flow of information into the system by requiring all federal agencies to share relevant information," McCarthy wrote.

"This is an issue that I take most seriously, and an issue on which there has been bipartisan success in the past. In 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law my bill, P.L. 110-180, the NICS Improvement Amendments Act. This bill sought to strengthen the background check system. Given the bipartisan support the bill received, it can serve as a blueprint for how to move forward on this issue," McCarthy wrote.

McCarthy's husband was killed and her son was wounded in a mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993 — and she is an outspoken proponent of stricter gun laws.